Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases

By Jason Hennessey

If you're a lawyer, competition drives you—but not just in the courtroom.

You can't rely on success alone to stand out in today's market. You need an advantage you can depend on, a digital marketing expert or agency you can trust. Unfortunately, without industry knowledge, hiring one is not as simple as trusting your gut or a list of credentials.

In Law Firm SEO, Jason Hennessey shares the proven SEO strategies he's used for two decades to earn more than $500 million in new cases for his clients. The world of digital marketing is complex. It's easy to hire the wrong team and lose valuable time and money. Jason shows you how he has reverse-engineered the Google algorithm with practical tools and techniques and without technical complexity. You don't need to be an SEO expert to leverage digital marketing. Whether you're a law student, solo practitioner, senior partner, or marketing director, this book will show you how to take your firm to the next level, increase revenue, and give you the competitive edge you need to stay ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781544519357

Book preview

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Contents

Foreword

Michael Mogill, Crisp Video, Founder and CEO

Introduction

Chapter One

What Is SEO?

Chapter Two

Behind the Scenes of the Google Algorithm

Chapter Three

The Three Main Components of SEO

Chapter Four

Creating the Blueprint for Your Overall Web Strategy

Chapter Five

Your Digital Marketing Team

Chapter Six

Tools to Help You Measure Success

Chapter Seven

Content Strategy

Chapter Eight

Increasing Your Website’s Popularity One Link at a Time

Chapter Nine

Technical SEO

Chapter Ten

Getting onto Google Maps

Chapter Eleven

The Importance of Photos and Videos in Your Strategy

Chapter Twelve

Turning Web Traffic into Cases

Chapter Thirteen

Negative SEO

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Advance Praise for Law Firm SEO

Jason Hennessey is the platinum standard for digital marketing and search engine optimization. In a world of so many charlatans and snake oil salesmen in the digital marketing space, he is the real deal.

—Rich Newsome, trial lawyer and Founder of Trialschool.org

Jason is a straight shooter in business and in his personal life. He is one of the most knowledgeable marketers in the industry. I go to him whenever I have questions about SEO and Google.

—Harlan Schillinger, Board Member of the National Trial Lawyers Association

I’ve been doing digital marketing for law firms for the past sixteen years. I’ve used every SEO out there. Jason is the best. He’s the only person we recommend to our clients, and the only SEO we use for our projects.

—Braden Pollack, Founder of Legal Brand Marketing

There is no one in the industry who knows SEO better than Jason. I highly recommend him to all of my clients simply because he is the best.

—Jacob Malherbe, Founder of X Social Media

Jason is a clever marketer, a savvy businessman, and an all-around good guy. He’s built an impressive company with over one hundred employees, and he’s not showing any signs of slowing down.

—Stephan Spencer, coauthor of The Art of SEO

Copyright © 2021 Jason Hennessey

All rights reserved.

Law Firm SEO

Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases

ISBN 978-1-5445-1937-1 Hardcover

978-1-5445-1936-4 Paperback

978-1-5445-1935-7 Ebook

978-1-5445-1938-8 Audiobook

Foreword

Michael Mogill, Crisp Video, Founder and CEO

The irony was not lost on me when Jason asked me to write the foreword for this book. It’s no secret that I’m not very well-loved by many of the SEO agencies in the legal industry.

An unfortunate reality of SEO is its low barrier to entry. Anyone can take an online course, over the weekend, and then advertise themselves as an expert in SEO.

As a result, the legal industry is notoriously flooded with numerous fly-by-night SEO agencies and self-proclaimed SEO gurus who promise to get your law firm ranking on the first page of Google for meaningful keywords and then, unsurprisingly, fail to deliver.

For these reasons, among others, it’s not uncommon for many attorneys to harbor at least some resentment towards SEO because they’ve been taken for a ride one too many times.

As the CEO of the nation’s leading law-firm growth company, I’ve been outspoken in challenging SEO charlatans and have gone so far as to say that 99 percent of the SEO being done by these agencies isn’t worth the investment, as it fails to move the needle in a meaningful way for most law firms.

Having helped over one thousand law firms drive nearly a billion dollars in revenue, I understand what it takes for law firms to stand out from the competition, attract the best cases, and become the obvious choice in their market. So, believe me when I tell you this: Jason Hennessey is the real deal—the 1 percent of SEO professionals who can make a transformational impact in your law firm’s case volume and revenue. Few people have as thorough an understanding of and passion towards SEO as Jason. The man is literally obsessed with SEO and has dedicated his life to it.

I’ve always trusted professionals who practice what they preach, in their own organization, and Jason has not only helped many of the nation’s fast-growing law firms generate millions in revenue through SEO, but he’s also built many multimillion-dollar businesses of his own, leveraging the exact same strategies he outlines in this book.

If it’s important for you to outrank your competition, drive more traffic to your website, get more leads, and, most importantly, sign more cases, SEO can help you achieve these goals.

Whether or not you’re competing against hundreds or thousands of law firms in your market, simply dabbling with SEO won’t get you results. The front page of Google only has so many spots, and if you aren’t occupying at least one of them, your firm is at a competitive disadvantage.

With this book, Jason helps level the playing field for any law firm, regardless of size, market, or practice area. In its pages, you’ll find an in-depth playbook on the most effective ways to drive real results for your law firm through SEO.

If you’re ready to make a serious commitment to doing SEO the right way and learning from the best, the lessons you learn in this book will help you take your practice to the next level.

Best-Selling Author of The Game Changing Attorney

Introduction

The jury returned a $25 million verdict in a case that came from a website lead, my client, who is a trial lawyer, told me over the phone.

As a search engine optimization (SEO) practitioner, that conversation stands out to me as one of the high points of my career—so far. It epitomizes the reason I’ve spent the last two decades reverse engineering Google’s search algorithm: to connect lawyers with people who need them.

My client went on to say, And that particular lead originated from a Google Organic Search, based on the SEO strategy, that you and your team have been implementing.

I could hear the excitement in his voice that day, and it went deeper than just the money. Not only had his investment in SEO paid off, with a major win for his law firm, but he had secured justice for a family that had suffered a terrible loss. Like David fighting Goliath, his firm had taken on a powerful insurance company and won.

When someone is injured or a loved one dies, there is no reversing the damage or bringing them back. But as a lawyer, you can do the next best thing and ensure that your client’s family has financial stability. You can secure the funds that allow your client to pay off their home or send their kids to college. Victories like the one described above are what your hard work is all about.

Right now, there are potential clients who desperately need your services, but they can’t find you. When they search for a lawyer, using Google, chances are your competitors are showing up above you and taking some of your market shares. Most of the time, it’s not the best lawyers showing up in these searches; it’s the best marketers. Specifically, digital marketers. SEO is their secret weapon.

SEO will increase the visibility of your website, so you attract more clients to your law firm. Unlike the broad, unfocused reach of a billboard, which does have its value, SEO empowers you to target exactly the types of clients you want, down to the specific keywords they’re searching for on Google. One of these clients might be your next multimillion-dollar case.

Furthermore, SEO grows your website into a valuable business asset. By applying my proven SEO strategy, you can generate traffic worth thousands or millions of dollars in equivalent Google paid ads. Business brokers take into consideration a website’s traffic and value, when prepping to sell your firm, making SEO a critical and worthwhile long-term investment. Done right, SEO will pay for itself and much more.

Forget What You Think You Know about SEO

If you’re reading this book, you’ve probably hired and fired half a dozen digital marketing agencies over the years. Despite all the fancy charts they presented, their efforts may never have translated into a meaningful increase in cases. In short, they may have promised the world, only to fail to deliver real results.

With so many self-proclaimed SEO experts out there, it’s easy to get burned. You didn’t know how to keep score then, but that’s what this book will teach you. You’ll have all the tools you need to hold a digital marketing team accountable or to manage your website’s SEO yourself.

You’ll learn how to:

Understand SEO fundamentals

Design and engineer your website’s blueprint and architecture

Recruit a digital marketing team and hold them accountable

Measure the success of your SEO efforts

Create a targeted content strategy

Apply advanced SEO techniques to your website

I’m going to break down SEO, using simple, easy-to-understand explanations that address the specific marketing needs of law firms. If you’re intimidated by SEO, don’t be. Before working with my agency, many of my clients had gone to a bookstore, asked about SEO, and were pointed toward the computer-engineering section. They tentatively cracked open a book, only to be overwhelmed with technical jargon and more details than any law-firm owner or marketing director needs to know.

This isn’t that kind of book. SEO doesn’t have to be complicated, and you don’t need to be a coder to understand and master it. In fact, I don’t code myself.

Working in SEO since the Beginning

SEO became a discipline in the late nineties, and by 2001, I had immersed myself in the field. Since then, I’ve spent most of my adult life reverse engineering Google’s algorithm—figuring out exactly why Google ranks web pages the way it does. What does Google measure? What does it value? Why is one webpage ranked higher than another? What can you do to make your website reach more eyeballs? I found the answers.

All the information in this book is practical, not theoretical. It’s based on my firsthand experience studying SEO in the legal vertical and working with some of the biggest law firms in America. Google doesn’t publish the secrets behind their algorithm, so you won’t find this information in universities. They certainly aren’t teaching it in law school. It has taken many years of trial and error, growing many law firms’ traffic and revenue, to develop proven SEO strategies that you can start implementing right away.

By the time you’re done with this book, you’ll truly understand what happens when you click Search on Google and how it impacts your website. Most importantly, I’m going to make it easy for you to implement my proven SEO strategy, dominate your market from a digital perspective, and sign more cases.

If you’re ready to reach more clients, let’s get started.

Chapter One

What Is SEO?

Opening this book, you might have a rough idea of what SEO means. You know it’s a series of actions you can proactively take to make your website more popular and your law firm more profitable. You may have paid experts to handle your SEO before, but perhaps their efforts didn’t have a big impact. But one thing is certain: you are tired of wasting money on it.

I can tell you what SEO doesn’t stand for: it’s not the Same Excuses Over and Over.

My kids would groan at the dad joke, but it’s true. SEO has gotten a bad rap over the years. If you’ve worked with ineffective experts before, I understand why you’d feel wary of the subject, but done right, SEO is a worthwhile investment for your law firm that can deliver an exponential return on the value you put into it. If you own one of the larger firms in your area, SEO